Running Through National Emergency Scenarios

RUSH: Jim in San Francisco. Jim, great to have you. How are you doing, sir?

CALLER: Hey, really good, Rush. Happy birthday from your only fan out here in San Francisco.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. We have many more. I mean, I'm not trying to diminish you, but our audience ratings out there are quite high. There's a lot of hidden -- yeah, you're not alone out there.

CALLER: I am unbound and I am not diminished in San Francisco. So but, anyway, Rush, what I wanted to point out was going back to the beginning of the show when we were talking about national emergencies and Republicans. I just think that we need to fight like warriors, you know, cynical warriors, like the Democrats do. And I was gonna give two ideas, and I hope anybody from the administration or anybody that has access to the administration passes these two ideas up the flagpole, but here we go. So idea one is, we know as sure as the sun shines that if Trump declares a national emergency, that an injunction will be issued by the Ninth Circuit out in the western states. And why the Ninth Circuit? Because they're reliably liberal judges, and --

RUSH: Well, no, no. It can't first go to the Ninth Circuit. They're an appellate court. They'll have to find -- we discussed this earlier in the week. I'm gonna have to hold you through the break because it's coming up here. They'll find a federal judge somewhere Hawaii or Washington or Oregon that will declare an injunction.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Okay back now to Jim in San Francisco. So, Jim, what they'd do is they'd find a federal judge and he would issue a stay or an injunction.

CALLER: Right, right. Yes, yes.

RUSH: The Trump administration would appeal it and they'll find a judge where the appeal would be to the Ninth Circus. So they would be the second court to get it.

CALLER: Rush? Rush, let me continue. The reason why it's always the Ninth Circuit is because Republicans always sit around with thumbs up their noses waiting for a liberal to file it in the Ninth Circuit. What I suggest is that what we do is that we know that Trump's gonna do this, that literally one second after he declares a national emergency, we file for an injunction in the 5th, the 8th, or 11th Districts and let them take it because you can't have all these different districts fighting the same battle. Whoever comes first... In this case would be the 5th down in Texas would be hearing the case and when the 9th District starts stamping like Rumpelstiltskin saying, "We want it! We want it!" they're gonna have to defer to the federal district court in Texas that took it up first.

RUSH: Okay let me just see if I understand what you're saying. The second that Trump -- and this is all coordinated.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So Trump declares the emergency. A Trump ally files a stay of execution, an injunction in what you think is a friendly circuit.

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: So the federal judge will still issue a stay, an injunction against Trump's order that will then be appealed to what you think is a friendly circuit court that will overturn the injunction and the emergency will be on?

CALLER: Yes. You end-run the liberals. You end-run them by getting ahead of them in a more friendly court. Okay, let me give you my second idea and that's this. A national emergency allows the president to use different pots of money to pay for, in this case, a wall. What I suggest that the administration do when they declare a national emergency, along with building the wall is to pay for all the federal workers right now. Float them loans, give them their normal paychecks, and let the Democrats argue against why that shouldn't happen.

RUSH: Well, now you got me caught up here in trying to analyze this whether or not it is legal for the president to include in the money that he's going to allocate for the national emergency -- i.e., the building the wall -- that he's then gonna take some additional money and repay furloughed federal employees. I don't know that that would qualify as -- that federal employees not being paid over a pay period or two would qualify as -- a national emergency.

Still, your ideas the Democrats would try to get that stopped (chuckles), which would put them on the side of making sure federal workers remain payless. I like it overall. The thing is, it's just risky. You think certain appellate districts would be friendly. But there are liberal judges everywhere on every one of these circuit courts or these appellate courts. You never know what three judges you're gonna get to start out with -- and then if you lose with that three-judge panel, then you can request en banc, which means the entire bunch of 'em on the court.

It's a risky strategy for the Republicans to try to be the first to declare the state of emergency unconstitutional. (chuckling) But I understand your thinking. You want to beat the Democrats to the punch and make sure that they don't get to use their friendly courts, and I like that. If some mechanism could be found... 'Cause that is the pattern, and everybody knows that it's gonna happen. In fact, there's... Let me find it. Yeah. Here's a story from TheHill.com. It's exactly about this. Get this headline:

"Democrats Warm to Idea of Emergency Declaration to Reopen Government." This is from TheHill.com. I should add that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina just tweeted that he had met with the president, and it is without doubt -- there is no question -- that the Democrats hate Donald Trump and are never, ever gonna agree to anything that he wants for whatever reason, no matter what harm comes to them. That their sole agenda is to destroy Donald Trump, to do everything they can to see to it that he doesn't get reelected in 2020 -- and, even better, maybe get impeached!

There is literally no way. Graham is saying there's no way. The only thing, therefore -- Senator Graham is saying -- is for Trump to declare the emergency now, that there is no point in waiting because the Democrats are never gonna talk. They're never gonna agree. They're never gonna budge. They're never gonna do anything. Now, Trump is on record as saying he would prefer this get solved in a bipartisan way. He's also acknowledged that it's pretty likely that he'll be declaring the national emergency.

If I'm Trump -- and this is not a comment on anybody. If I'm Trump, I'm gonna be very careful about listening to a bunch of different voices advocating things, because if I'm Donald Trump, I've gotta make sure that some of these voices are not trying to sabotage me into doing things that are gonna end up making what I want to accomplish here (i.e., get the wall and get border security) impossible. So I don't think... It's not a legal question. He clearly has the constitutional authority and legislative authority.

The congress has passed the National Emergencies Act in 1976. There's no way he can't do this. But that doesn't mean they're not gonna try to stop him in the courts. Declaring a national emergency, Senator Graham says, is the only way that this is gonna get done. So now the Democrats are warming to the idea of this. Why? Before we get to that, I mentioned earlier that there are cracks in the Democrat coalition even now, that more and more Democrats are beginning to acknowledge the need for fencing and areas where a wall would be built.

Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat, Oregon: "Some fencing has uses. Some barriers are useful." Representative Cheri Bustos, Democrat, Illinois: "If we have a partial wall, if we have fence, if we have technology used to keep our border safe, all of that's fine." Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat, New York: "There are areas along the border where there are currently fences that are put up or barriers that are put up that need to be enhanced."

Senator Ben Cardin, Democrat, Maryland: "Certainly you need barriers, and we support barriers." Senator John Sarbanes, Democrat, Maryland: "Certain physical barriers can make sense along the border, and a lot of places you already have that." Representative Katherine Clark, Democrat, Massachusetts: "I think there are parts of border that would benefit from repairing fencing and other barricades that already exist there." So let's see. One...two..three..four..five... six Democrats now are acknowledging the usefulness and need for a wall. So it's not total unity on the Democrat side.

And a lot of Democrats that won in November did so in Trump districts. There are people in those districts that voted for Trump who still want Trump to succeed even though they may have voted for a Democrat in the House race. So now the back to the Hill story. “Democrats Warm to Idea of Emergency Declaration to Reopen Government.”

Now, it says here: “The supportive Democrats are quick to emphasize they don’t believe the president has the legal authority to declare such an emergency, predicting the maneuver would quickly lead to lawsuits that they themselves would support.” A-ha! So the Hill gives up the game. They want the president to declare an emergency 'cause they don't think he can and they want him shut down in the courts.

I mentioned this is a rumor floating around yesterday. Democrats want Trump to go the emergency route, knowing it's gonna be blocked by a judge. Once that happens the legal process begins to go the speed of a turtle. And this thing could take longer than the remainder of Trump's presidential term in office.

I've even heard -- you want to hear the next rumor? You're not gonna like this one. I've heard it speculated that Trump really doesn't care. He just wants to keep his base happy, so he will declare a national emergency, and if the Democrats stop him in court, no big deal, he has fulfilled his promise, he did everything he could. If the Democrats then stand in the way and a bunch of judges, well, he did his best.

There's so much poisonous stuff out there that you have to weed through. They're doing everything they can to try to convince Trump voters that they're wasting their time supporting him. And in this instance, they're trying to tell Trump voters that they're being fooled, that Trump doesn't really care about this. Look at the Maggie Haberman leak. Trump didn't even want to do the national address.

And then the next leak, Trump didn't even want to go to the border. He didn't think any of it was gonna make a difference, but his staff made him do it, so he did it, but he didn't want to do it. Now they're saying, Trump doesn’t even really care. He'll declare emergency status and then he knows the courts will shut it down and that'll be that. And he can say he kept his promise. So keep a sharp eye 'cause there's all kinds of stuff lurking around out there, effervescing up, designed to get you to question your support for Trump.